W & M defensive end Adrian Tracy's success is a product of hard work — his and his mom's

Melinda Waldrop| 247-4634

Ann Hill told herself, over and over, that she wouldn't cry.

But on Senior Day at William and Mary's Zable Stadium, as she watched her 6-foot-4, 243-pound baby boy walk toward her, the tears would not listen.

For much of Adrian Tracy's childhood, it was just the two of them, with Ann Hill working two jobs and putting herself through business school at night, all the while keeping a roof over her son's head and clothes — nice clothes — on his back.

Now, Ann Hill's son is awash in awards and expectations, with All-American honors at his feet and NFL prospects in his future, a defensive end with 20 sacks (and counting) in the past two seasons and pro scouts following his every move.

Before making two sacks in his final regular-season home game, Tracy met his mother in the end zone during a pregame ceremony honoring the Tribe's seniors. He offered her his arm.

And she cried.

"We kind of had some rough beginnings, and just seeing that … " Ann Hill said. "It was just an overwhelming type thing, and I'm just so very proud of him."

Tracy, a terror to opposing players with 10 sacks this season — two shy of the school single-season record — and 17 1/2 tackles for losses, saw his mother's tears — and fell apart.

"As soon as I looked over there, and she's trying to wipe the tears away … I lost it," Tracy said. "There's just so much built-up emotion, and we've come a long way."

A long way from the house in Northern Virginia without heat, from the five or six trips a day on the bus because Ann Hill couldn't afford a car. A long way from the little boy who wondered why his biological father wasn't there, and from the single mother who wondered if she was raising her child right.

"There were times I didn't think that I was good enough, that I was doing the best by him," Hill said. "Would he be better off with a family, a two-parent family, raising him? … There were many, many times where I'd be crying and (thinking) I don't know how we're going to get through it, but I'd look at him, and he's always had such a bright smile … "

Hill, now 47, did her best to keep Adrian, now 22, supplied with the Erector Sets and Legos that he loved as a child while shielding him as best she could from the struggle that required.

"At one point I was working a paper-route job early in the morning, and then I had a full-time job (as) an administrative assistant," she said. "I went to school at night, full-time. … I didn't ever want him to feel like he was missing anything, so I just kind of pushed myself a little harder to make sure we lived in decent housing and he had clothes, so that no one could really tell he (had) a single parent."

"Early on, he was kind of in and out," Adrian said. "Being a young kid, especially a boy, when your dad does that, you kind of question some things, as to, what am I doing? Why wouldn't he want to spend time with his son? But everybody has their own things that they're going through. Toward my junior and senior year in high school, he came around a little bit more. We started to establish a little something. … It's not really a father-son relationship, because I'm 22 right now. It's pretty much just a friendship."

Ann Hill played the role of both mom and dad, introducing Adrian to basketball, her favorite sport, then baseball, soccer and football. Growing up as a foster child, Ann was unable to participate in sports as much as she would have liked, and she was determined her son would not have the same regrets.

"I'm just a big sports buff, and unfortunately, growing up in foster homes and stuff, I didn't get to really do what I wanted to do," Ann Hill said. "I loved basketball. … I'd leave work and I'd take him to shoot. (When) he started making his shots, and I was so psyched."

As Adrian grew up, his mother began dating Charles Hill. When talk turned to marriage, Adrian met "Mr. Hill," and Ann and Charles were married three days after Adrian turned 7.

"We celebrate it all together," Ann Hill said. "It's all of us. We all got married."

A month after the wedding, Adrian and Charles Hill were having one of their regular wrestling matches on the living-room floor when Charles left the room.

"They said something back and forth to each other, but I'll just never forget my husband's face when Adrian said, 'Come back here, Dad!'" Ann Hill said. "... Then they just got back on the floor and wrestled again, and it's been like that ever since. Now he calls him Pops because he thinks that's cool."

The marriage brought its own challenges, though. Along came a little brother, then a little sister, and Adrian spent a chunk of his teenage years baby-sitting while his parents worked.

"At the time, it was upsetting," Tracy said. "My friends were going out, doing this and that, (and) I was like, 'I have friends. I have a life.' But it was for the better. … Us five as a whole are really close, really tight-knit. I feel like if that didn't happen, it wouldn't be like that, and there's a lot of families that wish that they were as close as we are."

Ann and Charles, who was also on the field at Senior Day, are fixtures at William and Mary, attending every game and visiting most weekends. As proud as she is of Adrian's football prowess, Ann is more pleased that he will graduate in May with a degree in kinesiology.

"Having him as a single parent, it was like, 'You will get to college. It doesn't matter about the single-parent statistic there,'" Ann Hill said. "'You will go, and I will do whatever I have to do to see that you get there. And you will finish and set a standard for yourself.' "

After one game, in his redshirt freshman year, Adrian said Richard Tracy called to him from the stands, but was gone when he came out of the locker room. It was one more painful memory Adrian can't quite forget as he tries to forge a new bond with his dad.

"To be honest, I kind of use that as motivation," he said. "(I don't) use it as anything negative, but as a driving factor — 'I will succeed, I will put all my effort into it.' That's pretty much where I am right now."

Tracy's present-day reality also includes a plethora of messages from the scouts and agents who want a piece of his promising future. He funnels all of them through his mom, who is coming to terms with the things she heard about her son while watching a recent TV game.

"The announcers were talking about the fact that you'll see him on Sundays, and I'm watching him, and I kept saying to my husband, 'That's my kid. My kid is on TV. They're talking about my child,'" Ann Hill said. "So kind of getting that wrapped around your brain is kind of surreal. I can't even explain it."

Tracy tries to compartmentalize, storing the attention away while focusing on his senior season. But when he lines up today at Richmond, his mind may flash back to a week earlier, when he and his mom stood on a football field and cried together.

"Just making it to a college and graduating, because she wasn't able to do that at a four-year institution, and for me to be able to do that and make her proud …" Tracy said. "There's times that there's nothing that's going to stop me, and I feel like a lot of that has come from my mom."